Microsoft Phone System 101

Not even this photo does justice to the excitement in the market right now about Microsoft Phone System

The Microsoft Phone System wave is building momentum and it’s great to see the adoption and new clients signing up. At Arkadin, we are speaking with IT leaders from companies of all sizes that are showing interest in learning more about Microsoft Calling Plans.

I’ve been taking notes over the last few weeks and here are the most common questions that we’ve been asked about Microsoft Phone System during that time. As the offer evolves, I’ll be sure to keep you all updated.

1. What Office 365 licensing is required to support MS Phone System?

Users that want to use Microsoft Phone System need either an Office 365 E1/E3/E5 license.

2. Are PSTN minutes pooled?

Yes, PSTN minutes are pooled across an Office 366 tenant. If you have 200 users with the small domestic calling bundle (120 PSTN minutes per user per month), the entire organization has 200 users x 120 minutes = 24,000 minutes to play with each month. If the organization goes over the 24,000 minutes in a given month, communication credits (extra minutes) will need to be purchased via the admin portal.

3. What are the different Microsoft Calling Plan options?

• Domestic Calling Plan (120 minutes): small package for occasional phone users
• Domestic Calling Plan (3,000 minutes in US & Puerto Rico): standard package for an end user that calls mostly domestically
• Domestic & International Calling Plan (3,000 minutes in US & Puerto Rico and 600 international minutes): enhanced package for end users that call internationally on a regular basis

see more info here: https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/voice-calling

4. What countries does Microsoft currently support with local PSTN calling plans?

Microsoft has calling plans officially available in 9 countries today and 2 more countries are currently in preview.

Australia (preview via Telstra), Belgium, Canada (preview mode), France, Germany, Ireland, Puerto Rico, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom, United States

This is not the easiest list to find…so here is the link.

5. What is all the noise about Direct Routing with Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft announced last July (2018) that the future of intelligent communications with Microsoft is based on Teams. All future cloud developments for voice services are going to focus on Teams which means Microsoft Phone System is coming to Teams in a big way.

Direct Routing is the ability for companies to “bring their own trunk” (BYOT) or SIP services into Microsoft Teams. This is a huge step to democratizing (yup, I used that word) cloud voice services with Office 365.

High-level architecture for Direct Routing with Microsoft Teams

Direct routing will be available in 2 deployment approaches:

• customer-hosted: client will need to purchase a certified SBC (from either Ribbon or AudioCodes) and then manage the appliance, SIP circuits and call quality in their environment
• partner-hosted: a service provider (like Arkadin) will host the required infrastructure and take care of SIP services and platform management in the cloud as a service. Clients will be able to outsource the day-to-day complexities to a service provider and take advantage of global calling plans without any upfront or ongoing hardware investment.

6. What does the migration path look like from Skype for Business to Teams?

Definitely the most popular question right now across the market. The answer is: it depends on several factors. The following are 3 standard follow up questions I ask when someone asks me about SfB and Teams.

• How far down the path is your business Office 365? Skype for Business?
• What functionality do you need supported in Teams before going all-in?
• What is the communication style of your organization and does it align with Teams?

Here’s an diagram we built recently with a client that we were assisting to built a SfB to Teams migration path. It’s a great example of the multi-phase journey to go from Cisco/Skype to Teams.

Diagram charting out the the migration path for a Client from Skype for Business/Cisco CUCM to Microsoft Teams over a 3 year period.

7. How does it work if a company wants to voice-enable users in a country different then where the Office 365 tenant is setup?

The tenant physical location doesn’t matter, but the country you use to when you create the tenant does. It needs to be of a country where we can sell calling plans (not necessarily where we have calling plans). For example, your tenant could be in Ireland, but if you signed up with a location of Iceland, Microsoft cannot sell calling plans to Iceland users.

8. What steps (as it relates to the users location) are required to ensure a user can be activated with a local calling plan?

Assigning calling plans to users requires the user’s location to match the calling plan’s country. For example, a Canadian user could only be assigned a Canadian calling plan. There will be a location field in the same area where users are assigned licenses within the Office 365 admin portal.

It’s an exciting time right in the Microsoft Intelligent Communications space and I’m looking forward to seeing the wave of client adoption continue to grow over the next 12–24 months. Stay tuned for more common q’s about Intelligent Communications.

If you have questions you’d like answered, feel free to share in the comments and I’ll be sure to get back to you.